This is what's been hung from the rafters at Scotiabank Place:
And they're all lies. The teams that won those cups were never called the Ottawa Senators; that was just their nickname. The name of the team was the Ottawa Hockey Club, or Ottawa HC for short. And anyway, whatever they're called, the franchise that plays in that arena hasn't won a single Stanley Cup. They have no connection whatsoever to the team that did, except that they've taken the earlier team's nickname and made it their name. They have as much right to those Cup banners as I do.
Exhibit B: The Winnipeg Jets [sic] and their logo
The Winnipeg Jets [sic], of course, aren't the Winnipeg Jets; the Phoenix Coyotes are. The "Winnipeg Jets" of today are the Atlanta Thrashers. It's incredibly disrespectful to the original Jets for the Thrashers' new Canadian owners to simply steal the name of the old team, especially since the Coyotes are the only ex-WHA team that actually commemorates their WHA heritage.
And the logo? What's that even supposed to be? I'm told by the Jets' Wikipedia page that it's an F/A-18 Hornet, as used by the Canadian air force. Except it isn't. Here's the Jets logo:
And here's a Hornet:
What's going on at the back of the Jets' jet, where the Hornet's exhausts are supposed to be? There's, like, a spike? So in addition to stealing the old Jets' name, they play with a logo that defaces the equipment of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The old Jets had a portrait of her Majesty the Queen in their arena; the new Jets mock her military.
And anyway, if the new Jets were any kind of patriots, they wouldn't have a US jet on their logo, but the Avro Arrow, as far as I'm concerned.
It's often said that hockey is a very conservative sport. In the day-to-day political sense of the word, i.e. hating people who are different than you and being angry a lot, I suppose that's true. But as for respecting your past and your heritage and everything like that? In Ottawa and Winnipeg at least, not so much.
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